Bootleg

Here’s a picture by my brother-in-law scott, taken at Fonthill, the palatial cement estate of the late Henry Mercer of Doylestown, Pennsylvania. (Note to Loyal Readers: I can’t get dumb old Blogger to properly upload photos yet again tonight – why is something always broken on Blogger lately? – so I had to link to the Flickr version today. The quality may be lower than usual, but I doubt you’ll notice and, besides, I had very little choice.)

Anyway, the reason this post is titled “bootleg” is that Scott found out shortly after snapping this and a few other photos that indoor photography at Fonthill is Strictly Forbidden. Fortunately, they didn’t grab his camera and stomp it under their boot heels, so he was able to smuggle this photo out for my Loyal Readers’ pleasure. Just remember, a lot of good men died to get this picture to you. Or at least one good man was slightly inconvenienced.

It’s late already (yet again), so this will be brief. Drove to work today. The drive in was pretty standard, but the return trip was quick! Made it in the middle of rush hour in slightly over an hour and a half. That’s probably not a precedent, though, so I’ll just enjoy it for what it is. I’ll ride the train tomorrow.

I upgraded the Fedora installation from Core 3 to Core 5 on Loyal Reader Number Two’s computer yesterday. It somehow goofed up the default login page and I don’t know how to fix it (could figure it out, but I don’t really feel like doing that), so I’m putting on a fresh install of Core 5 tonight. I believe the old one had just about every possible package on it, which took several hours to install yesterday afternoon and evening and then all night to update everything to the latest version, but this time I’m just installing it as a workstation. That should be about a 30-minute process. I can go back and install more packages whenever I want to, and it really shouldn’t need much more. I didn’t install the developer or web server packages, for example. They’re easy to do, just in case LRN2 ever needs those packages, which will probably be never. In any case, there will be a lot of stuff installed there, and he primarily uses Windows anyway.

Got my iBoss today. I don’t think I mentioned it when I ordered it the other day, but it’s a small internet appliance that installs between the cable modem and the router. It filters out objectionable web content pretty well, keeps the webmaster informed via email of all attempted viewings of forbidden content, and resists pretty much every conceivable attempt to sidestep it. It’s highly configurable, too. I can turn the internet off either on a scheduled basis or anytime I feel the need (it’s scheduled to be off overnight on a daily basis, for example), filter specific websites, set time limits on certain sites, and do a host of other things. It has an easy-to-figure-out web interface, although its built-in web page is incredibly slow. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to slow down web traffic at all. It’s so secure that I feel comfortable keeping it in a public place, knowing that it will let me know if somebody tries to disconnect or bypass it. Pretty cool, and a good idea for a family. Leo Laporte recommends it highly (and uses it to protect his family), so you know it’s good. I recommend it too, so you can be doubly sure.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 at 10:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.